of crusades and the inquisition

[Teutonic Joe]

okay im not sure if this was covered in the preview or in any other so i decided to be the one to ask.
How will the crusades and the inquisition function in DotS

Historically, the crusades were the mixture of military and economical resources in taking a designated sites. The main three leaders of the first crusade were Godfrey of Boullion, Bohemund of Taranto, and Raymond of Tolouse (spelling?) and along with them was Tancred of Taranto and a army from the papacy. Not all of Europe formed a army to go infidel stomping. Godfrey and Raymond were from the French and German regions (Tolouse is in france and Boullion is in the HRE right?) and Bohemund and Tancred and the papacy's general were from italy and sicily. Also the to lead a army on a crusade should cost you, not allow you to gain money by having a upkeep free full stack(s) running around. So what im curious to know is that is it possible to split crusade support between financial and military? The strongest nations would most likely assemble a vast host of soldiers while the smaller nations would provide some financial aid. Cause i hear more of the french, germans, italians, and british (3rd crusade) taking part in the middle east rather then say Denmark (who would be more concerned with the Prussian Crusade along with sweden, poland, and germany). Then again maybe there was a valiant army of crusading vikings running around the middle east or somethin....

Also i always thought the inquisitions in MTW were underwhelming. In spain, the inquisition should take a very dramatic turn since Grand Inquisitor Torquemada (again spelling?) did ensure that the spanish inquistion would run more by Ferdinand and Isabella rather than pope Sixtus IV (thats the correct pope right? im sure it is.). Civil order amongst the jewish populace (conversos) should drop since they were targetted and the Kingdom of Aragon should show so unrest since they didnt want to have the inquisition meddling with their nation. So will the inquisition be buffed and maybe allow nations to build inquisitors like MTW 1?

I may have butchered historical references by summarizing to much, but i hope i was able to make a point in my questions.

[Teutonic Joe]

redundant question?

[Alkidas]

Vanilla inquisitor is - midlly put - unrealistic, so inquisition will either be removed or heavily modded. That's really all I can say right now.

[Teutonic Joe]

it would be a shame to see it gone since it played a large role in the medieval era, especially in spain.

[Cathar1209]

It would be a shame to see it go, but bear this in mind:
in Spain, the Inquisition was active in the end of the Middle Ages, at the days of the "Catholic Kings", Fernando and Isabella (end of the 15th century - the spanish inquisition was established in 1480).
For a Med. II mod, i think the most important thing one must have in mind is that the Inquisition existed since the 12th century, but in a much "less agressive" form - it was formed in specific moments for specific purposes, on a specific bishopric/region. Nevertheless, it became more organized with the support of a massive bureaucracy (recordings of the processes and questionings) during the 13th century, mainly after 1233 and the reorganization made by the Papacy in order to have an effective Inquisition for a specific purpose: fighting against the Cathars (then follwed the Waldensians, the Dolcinites - remember "The Name of the Rose"?) in northern Italy, southern France and Catalonia.
That was the real medieval inquisition , notthemore state-funded inquisition of the spanish kingdom at the end of the 15th c...

[Teutonic Joe]

still i remember in the first MTW, i felt worried whenever a inquisitor showed up in a province of mine. Would be cool feeling the same way in DotS since M2TW inquisitors seemed more pointless and annoying...like how they would go after that one diplomat that you had travelling from Jerusalem (i was played stainless steel as KoJ) and he gets tried and executed by a inquisitor.

[Philippon]

Teutonic Joe: Historically, the crusades were the mixture of military and economical resources in taking a designated sites.

Me: That's the fashionable theory of today. But it simply does not jibe with the written records we have of the people who actually went on them. While there are those today who's superficial approach to deep beliefs led them to conclude that the faith claims were just the 'poltiical' response, cynically delivered, the simple fact is that most of the crusaders were doing what they claimed to be doing .. . going on a pilgrimage (which is what they called them) and making sure that anyone who tried to stop them got stompped.

Now there were of course, folks who got all wrapped up in the taking of cities and dutchies and counties and such, and were going for that reason alone . . . but as the eyewitness reports show, when Bohemond was determined to stay in Antioch, his own men began to systematically tear down the walls of Antioch so that he would be left with a very large and easily plundered principality for the first Turkish warlord who took a fancy to it.

Now can anyone here imagine the American Army deliberately blowing up their own nuclear missle bases, sinking their aircraft carriers, and dumping their own tanks into the ocean until the President promised to send them to Israel to fight Al Quada? The President being unable to stop it since his own Generals were helping the deliberate sabotaging of the countries defenses?

That's how seriously Bohemond's men took their vow to pilgrimage to Jerusalem.

They didn't stop until Bohemond agreed to continue with the crusade and gave a date for the march south.

And when he didn't keep that, they left without him.

So that left Bohemond with half torn down walls, and no troops, in his 'precious' city of Antioch with envoys of the Byzantine Empire knocking on his door reminding him that he had sworn an oath to turn that city over to them, and an army of 30,000 Greeks on the hill outside likewise rather annoyed at his duplicity up to that point.

Upon taking of Jerusalem, 95% of the crusaders went back to Europe. And that was the persistant pattern throughout the crusading period.

The real problem you see, is that it's hard for many modern men to grasp that a man would pay his own way to march in an army of people likewise paying their own way, and then take nothing back save a few souvineers, like pebbles from the River Jordan or rocks from the Temple Mount. It simply boggles the imagination that people died by the tens of thousands on these journeys and did not fear such a fate.

Death on the way there or back wasn't regarded as a failure . . . but a triumph.

As G.K. Chesterton put it in his poem, "Lepanto".

"It is he that says not Kismet.
It is he who knows not fate.
It is Richard, it is Raymond, it is Godfrey at the gate.
It he who's loss is laughter when he counts the wager worth . . ."

Soldiers today expect to get paid. On the crusade, they actually thought they were going to become better people by doing this without any reward.

As Europe progressed the political considerations gained dominance, helped by short sighted Popes who let the power of it go to their heads and destroyed over time, the ideal of the crusade. But it never completely died until the Reformation destroyed the idea of Christendom.

Dr Regen Pernoud, the Medieval French Achivast in Paris, wrote a very good book on the history of the crusades which lays out the typical mindset of the crusader. It is titled appropriate enough "The Crusades".

[Baron Thunder-ten-tronckh]

Philippon, I have no knowledge to verify these facts, but every word of yours I lapped up like a thirsty dog. Previously, I've had no interest in the Crusades, but now you've made me crusade crazy. I've got to get my hands on some more first-person accounts (and some in Europe as well).

Tops post. I'd give you twenty rep, but I guess I can only give you one.

[spanish_emperor]

Yes the crusades are extremely interesting. I used to thought it was just a few militray men going to the holy land, fighting the turks, winning and then arriving to take it with ease. But it is much more than that, for example, the massacre of Jews that occured i Europe because many thought that by killing the Jews, who had themselves killed Christ only to see him rise again, were bigger enemies than the Muslims who they had not even heard about them, and then come the quarrels between the Byzantine Emperor and some of the crusaders who even attacked the outsides of Constantinople and even threaten the besiege the grand city itself, or even how those peasants reached Constantinople and had little success against the turks only to be slaughtered, or even how many of the crusaders were stupid and rejected advice from the Byzantines who knew the turks well and understood that it would take more than a head on charge to rout them. Or maybe how they besieged Antioch and capture it by the biggest luck, then only to be besiged in it and save themselves after they found the "holy spear" by which Christ himself was speared, and then come out to charge after dying of starvation and win against a superior foe and survive mainly thanks to disunity between the turkish army. Or even how the hardest part was conquering all those castles and cities between Antioch and Jerusalem which by the way Jerusalem was only conquered after several years because the leaders of the crusade were all ready confortable with their conquered land, and even after that the force was incredibly diminished in size. And of course much much more

[Teutonic Joe]

could it be possible to make the inquisitor effect the population? Unlike the vanilla inquistor who serves more as a holy assassin by going after character why do you make it so that when he enters a region with a high prescence or threatening level of other religions he cause a drop i religious tension at the cost of population (representing the people killed by the inquisition). Inquisitor could also be exclusive to Spain and the Papacy only since the Spanish Inquisition was state run.

[Alexios Komnenos]

Teutonic Joe: Historically, the crusades were the mixture of military and economical resources in taking a designated sites.

Me: That's the fashionable theory of today. But it simply does not jibe with the written records we have of the people who actually went on them. While there are those today who's superficial approach to deep beliefs led them to conclude that the faith claims were just the 'poltiical' response, cynically delivered, the simple fact is that most of the crusaders were doing what they claimed to be doing .. . going on a pilgrimage (which is what they called them) and making sure that anyone who tried to stop them got stompped.

Now there were of course, folks who got all wrapped up in the taking of cities and dutchies and counties and such, and were going for that reason alone . . . but as the eyewitness reports show, when Bohemond was determined to stay in Antioch, his own men began to systematically tear down the walls of Antioch so that he would be left with a very large and easily plundered principality for the first Turkish warlord who took a fancy to it.

Now can anyone here imagine the American Army deliberately blowing up their own nuclear missle bases, sinking their aircraft carriers, and dumping their own tanks into the ocean until the President promised to send them to Israel to fight Al Quada? The President being unable to stop it since his own Generals were helping the deliberate sabotaging of the countries defenses?

That's how seriously Bohemond's men took their vow to pilgrimage to Jerusalem.

They didn't stop until Bohemond agreed to continue with the crusade and gave a date for the march south.

And when he didn't keep that, they left without him.

So that left Bohemond with half torn down walls, and no troops, in his 'precious' city of Antioch with envoys of the Byzantine Empire knocking on his door reminding him that he had sworn an oath to turn that city over to them, and an army of 30,000 Greeks on the hill outside likewise rather annoyed at his duplicity up to that point.

Upon taking of Jerusalem, 95% of the crusaders went back to Europe. And that was the persistant pattern throughout the crusading period.

The real problem you see, is that it's hard for many modern men to grasp that a man would pay his own way to march in an army of people likewise paying their own way, and then take nothing back save a few souvineers, like pebbles from the River Jordan or rocks from the Temple Mount. It simply boggles the imagination that people died by the tens of thousands on these journeys and did not fear such a fate.

Death on the way there or back wasn't regarded as a failure . . . but a triumph.

As G.K. Chesterton put it in his poem, "Lepanto".

"It is he that says not Kismet.
It is he who knows not fate.
It is Richard, it is Raymond, it is Godfrey at the gate.
It he who's loss is laughter when he counts the wager worth . . ."

Soldiers today expect to get paid. On the crusade, they actually thought they were going to become better people by doing this without any reward.

As Europe progressed the political considerations gained dominance, helped by short sighted Popes who let the power of it go to their heads and destroyed over time, the ideal of the crusade. But it never completely died until the Reformation destroyed the idea of Christendom.

Dr Regen Pernoud, the Medieval French Achivast in Paris, wrote a very good book on the history of the crusades which lays out the typical mindset of the crusader. It is titled appropriate enough "The Crusades".

You're right about almost everything, but there's a point that I'd like to make clear: Crusades were indeed pilgrimages for the redeption of sins and salvation of the soul. But Crusader leaders were not that way. At leat, not all that way.

The First Crusade cost almost nothing to the kingdoms or the kings. It was the Crusade of the Second-Born, the ones who were not in the Church and were not going to inherit the good part of his father's cake. Noble sons with poor future expectancy, who decided that they could test their luck in Outremer. I hate to refer to that film, but in "Kingdom of Heaven" there's a line that's really true: "He who in France had nothing is in Holy Land the lord of a city". The character itself, Godfrey, is the second son of the lord of Balian's town.

There had even been a first pseudo-crusade, the crusade led by Peter the Eremit some years before the First Crusade; an "army" made of starving and thin peasants, criminals, fugitives, refugees (every single serf peasant who left the land he worked was a criminal in Feudal law, so there were plenty of them). The Turks wiped out all of them in the first battle, obviously and sad enough.

It was after the success of the First Crusade and the wealth that it brought to some nobles and merchants, especially Pisan, Venetian and Genoan merchants, when the kings, sometimes driven by the Pope's threat of exomunication, especially in the case of German kaisers (Frederick II suffered at least three excomunications and made a Crusade (the Sixth, I think) that the Pope invalidated, even though it conquered Jerusalem through a treaty with the Ayyubid Sultan, because he did it while excomunicated). The "deviation" of the Fourth Crusade and Venetian interests at taking Constantinople are the evidence of it.

But yes, common people went to Holy Land looking for redeption and salvation, no doubt of it.

Take care!

and a lot of refugees and fugitives, proscrites and criminals

[Philippon]

Alexios: You're right about almost everything, but there's a point that I'd like to make clear: Crusades were indeed pilgrimages for the redeption of sins and salvation of the soul. But Crusader leaders were not that way. At leat, not all that way.

Me: *Nods* The problem with posts is that in order to make a point you can only say so much before you run out of time. You are correct of course in that many of the leaders were there for not so much the spiritual benefits as the political ones. The point I was trying to make was to counter the common modern idea that it was only politics which governed the crusade and the spiritual was merely cynical propoganda for the peasent.

There is a great deal of misinformation about the Middle Ages which is routinely touted as fact (at least in my part of America) so I like to clarify things as best I can.

[Alkidas]

There are clear reasons why those nobles who had not had much success in Europe would go on a crusade. First of all, crusades are risky if you have a lot to lose. Your lands can be invaded and in any case you're not around to
see to them (of the most famous examples would be Philip Augustus attacking the lands of Richard the Lion-hearted while the latter had not yet returned from the crusade). It also enables those less fortunate nobles to make a name for themselves as Christian warriors which might help them later in European politics as well. I don't think that this excludes Christian motives. These are warriors, what they like to do is fight. But what is so useful about crusades from their point of view is that crusades make fighting acceptable: by fighting one can make up for the sins of one's past life.

[harden007]

Even if you see the crusades as a purely military endeavor, it was a justified one. It's not like Islam was sitting around like butterflies happily minding their own business; they had been invading and violently conquering Christian lands for centuries. The crusades, from a military point of view, were a defensive (counter-attack) operation.

[andriejj]

Even if you see the crusades as a purely military endeavor, it was a justified one. It's not like Islam was sitting around like butterflies happily minding their own business; they had been invading and violently conquering Christian lands for centuries. The crusades, from a military point of view, were a defensive (counter-attack) operation.

Oh please... Let's not start a discussion here. Nobody says muslims weren't expansive, but so were christians. There's no good and bad here. And saying that crusades were defensive is totally idiotic. Invasion on a never-catholic land is in no way defensive.

[Walkman810i]

Since when was the Holy Land never Catholic???
+ rep harden007

[OdinX]

Well historically speaking, the Holy Land was never really Islamic or Catholic, but rather Judaic. Remember the Israelite Empire consisted of everything from Gaza to Antioch so....

[Cynik]

Well this is extremely off-topic but I think what they're talking about is the Eastern Roman empire which was Christian or they converted to Christianity to which at the time they had control over the holy lands.

Though I'm not sure how they lost the lands, whether it was due to the spread of Islam or to conquest or a combination of both and the fall of Rome.

Regardless that's off-topic, what I wanted to add to this discussion was that playing a mod called Stainless Steel which you all most likely know about. The Crusades are fairly similar to the vanilla version of the game.

10 turns to create a crusading army and send it to the Holy Lands after 10 turns you cannot create another army but those existing armies are still making their way down to the destination. After the crusade has failed/succeeded you have a 10 turn cool down till you can launch another crusade.

Now as far as I know, their is 3 Muslim factions, and an unending army of Christian factions. Playing SS, when a crusade is announced, EVERY Christian faction joins and that takes a LONG time to defeat them all.

My question is, (because this a problem in SS) what should you/we do to avoid these endless crusades which basically stops you from having the luxury to expand?

And also how different will the crusades in DotS be from Vanilla MTW2?

[Walkman810i]

Well historically speaking, the Holy Land was never really Islamic or Catholic, but rather Judaic. Remember the Israelite Empire consisted of everything from Gaza to Antioch so....

I am not saying it was all Christain. There were Christians living there along with the Jews before the Muslims came and took over.

[OdinX]

I am not saying it was all Christain. There were Christians living there along with the Jews before the Muslims came and took over.

Well if that's what you meant then yes, you're right.